


Cradling Glass

by Hitsugi_Zirkus



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Freeform, Hospitalization, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hitsugi_Zirkus/pseuds/Hitsugi_Zirkus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clear squeezes your hand hard, he holds you like a child without a problem, and you’re confused by just how comforting it all is. Clear is comforting. He’s calm and gentle. He’s so gentle. He doesn’t have to be. He could destroy so much more than you possibly could with that fantastic strength he has.</p><p>[In which Clear starts visiting Mizuki at the hospital, and a bond forms.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cradling Glass

**Author's Note:**

> HEYO so this was a vent fic I wrote way back in like April. It's pretty long but also if you see no rhyme or reason to it, there's that reason as well. In second point-of-view because for some odd reason when I do vent fics, it always ends up that way but this time I felt like leaving it instead of redoing to third pov like I usually do. Have fun with the angst.

Too much happens in the short span of life. Life is only as long as you have lived, nothing further, because the next moment could be your last. In the few months, eleven years, sixteen years, twenty-seven years, there’s just endless pain. Life is too short, and you only have so much energy to be able to have the ability and heart to give to others. People and the world and yourself will just keep taking and taking and  _taking_.

What little you have left needs protecting. If the last shred of yourself is taken, then what would be the point in living? You get angry at what’s already been stripped, and the scraps you’re left with, nothing but torn remnants of parents that didn’t want you, eyes that judged you, skin that never changed colors no matter how much your lighter foster parents hugged and kissed you. You never ever stopped listening to words, and those sharp points of bleeding ballpoints tore at you too.

You get angry and you start pushing away anyone who glances at you or speaks to you. You toss a punch at the next kid who makes fun of your skin color. You make dents in your walls when you think of why your biological parents left you. Were you not enough to begin with? Were you incomplete in some way from the start?

Strength becomes an important thing to you. You can hurt people in order to protect yourself and what you value. The violence is liberating, and the bruises and cuts you receive from your fights are like badges of honor from protecting yourself and knocking down threats. They’re proof that you can still have control.

Your skin becomes thicker and your scrawny self learns to build up some muscle. You get stronger, and you become admired for it. The teardrop tattoo under your eye becomes a new symbol for you. And for some years, you find comfort in knowing you’re the head of the strongest Rib team on Midorijima, becoming a legend just like Morphine. It’s enough for smiles to come naturally to your face again, and the fighting becomes less about violence and more about sport.

Sometimes you forget what the fighting brought for you until the days the action seems to thin, no great thanks to the virtual game Rhyme that has become all the rage, and then you’re antsy again. Koujaku comes by more often to check on you. Aoba asks you over for dinner multiple times. But just over the horizon of their kindness is the ever-lurking technicolor presence of that damn virtual game.

How could anyone find satisfaction with something so false and concocted of illusion? You started a Rib gang because the physicality and real bonds that formed of it kept you tethered down, to something real, but no one knows how much you grapple with, and they think your hatred of Rhyme is too intense.

There’s a thousand itches crawling under your skin, jumping your muscles to attention. And when members of Dry Juice start to disband one by one, the coils come loose. You feel an anger boiling in your veils, familiar and almost comforting in its tight heat when you watch the faces of those backing out, the quiet but stiff apologies they give you. Their eyes hold your stagnant despair as you imagine your parents had, and countless lovers you fucked around with. Theirs are the eyes of people who leave you, and you nod, pretending you understand, except you can’t. You’ve beaten your knuckles raw and tossed guys twice your size to the ground, but all this strength is holding nothing close to your arms.

Looking back on it - the anger and the desperation and the brokenness of your state as you submitted yourself and your team to the black ink and hoods, all of which that sent you laying heavily on the sterile bed of the hospital, white-strip noose condemned around your neck and your mind rattling like cracked glass every time you so much as open your eyes - yeah, having the time to look back at it all and talk some of it out with Aoba, you start thinking you held on too tightly to everything. You crushed it all because of how selfish and paranoid you were. You thought the world was sand in your hands so you had to gather as much as possible, but that anger you had just burned every grain to something delicate, and you crushed it all in your arms.

The beautiful curls and color of tattoos you’ve put on bodies for years suddenly seems crude. You thought it was art, that it was leaving a piece of yourself with other people, that it was making something beautiful living forever etched on skin. But now the burst of ink and smear of blood and smell of rubber gloves makes it all seems clinical and detached and cruel. Maybe you never made anything beautiful. Maybe you’ve only known how to make things bleed, including yourself.

You smile for Aoba and Koujaku, joke with them if you can. You want to apologize more to Tae, to what remains of your team (especially the ones who for some godforsaken reason want to stay, and you can’t tell if you’re grateful for that or not). But you start to think apologizing too much will make the words stale, and you’re afraid your desperation for forgiveness will seep into them. The last thing you deserve is to be treated any sort of kindness.

You willingly resign yourself to the fact that these events will be curses you bear for the rest of your life, as plain as the burn of your wrapped neck and tangled shadow webs of nightmares whenever you so much as close your eyes.

At least it’s a short life. The days are blending together at any rate.

The off-white of the stagnant hospital is startled by the burst of something more purely white entering your room one day. You don’t think you’ve seen anything this white after Aoba’s smile. But there’s a fluff of white hair, large white jacket, and white shirt, gloves, boots. Pearly peach skin. You wonder if the stranger has a white smile, but the black distortion of the gasmask prevents you from seeing anything of their face.

They’re sitting beside you, where Aoba or Koujaku usually sit. The first time this happened, the blurry glance of the gasmask prompted your first instinct to shoot your fist out at them. Even if you were sluggish, you’ve woken up to enough nightmare afterimages to have perfect realtime reflexes. But it had registered just as your arm twitched that what’s roused you from your sleep wasn’t a nightmare, or the stranger’s presence. It was their singing.

Even now, weeks after the first incident, it pours out with the calm, dancing color of an aurora borealis, albeit slightly muffled because of the mask. You always wonder if someone so suspicious could have a voice so beautiful and ethereal. It’s as if cool raindrops are gently cascading down your body, and you let out a sigh, feeling your muscles relax as the music brushes deep into your skin, winding around alongside your sinew and calming you even to the marrow of your bones. As the melody soothes you, it occurs to you that the song is meant for you, that you’re being sung a lullaby, just like a child being gently rocked to sleep.

The singing stops a minute after you open your eyes. You’re staring at the wall, losing yourself in the song, and turn to your new companion when it’s over.

“Hey, Clear,” you say.

“Good afternoon, Mizuki-san. I’m sorry if I happened to wake you. You looked like,” he stops, voice lower, “you were having bad dreams again.”

You blink. “Oh.” Even though it scares the crap out of you to have them, actually discussing them just gives you the urge to dissociate from it. You’re ashamed to be seen like that. “It’s fine. I really like your singing. I’m sorry you had to see me in that state though.”

Clear shakes his head, insistently. “Not at all, Mizuki-san! It’d be best to try and put yourself at ease when you can.” With a familiarity you’re getting used to, Clear takes your hand, squeezing it lightly. Or what you suppose is lightly for him. It’s actually quite tight but you find much more comfort in that. But it’s not Clear’s fault; he probably has to do everything very consciously to not exert his true strength.

You like Clear. When your mind was under control of Morphine, you vaguely remember him as someone Aoba had brought with him when he went to save Tae. Clear’s appearance was very distinct, after all. There were others, but none of them visited you - not that that was something you held against them. You didn’t know them so there was no particular reason to see them, although you would like to apologize to them, if at least once.

Even if none of them come, Clear does. You give him his due apologies, to which he replied with a soft but firm reassurance, coupled with hopes that you’d recover soon. That time, he’d come with Aoba. But more and more you’d find Clear beside you without your mutual friend, without whom you really had no connection. But little by little, you forged a new bond with Clear. It’s a strange position, to find yourself becoming close to someone that firstly met you when you were at your lowest. Clear’s first impression of you was literally how cruel and violent you could be, even to your own best friends. Yet still, he sat here, and sang to you. For you.

Clear explained himself offhandedly that you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, that everyone has other sides of them that are secret. That’s also the day he tells you that he’s not human.

Sometimes it feels like Clear visits you more than Aoba and Koujaku do. You don’t mean this in a bad way, because you do appreciate the warmth and calm and optimism of his company. You just wonder if he has nothing else to do. Either way, you enjoy your time with him. He’s mysterious and weird, but his presence is enough to lighten up your day. He brings you a sketchbook and assortment of pens and colors when he learns that you are (were?) a tattoo artist.

At first, all you can draw is a phantasmagoria of dark swirls and shadows, but those are of course things you don’t let Clear see. When he comes over, you try to draw the starlight and crystalline rainbows of his voice, giving them physical form. Clear lights up when he sees them (he’s so expressive you don’t even need to see his face to know that; and sometimes you ask about that mask, about wanting to draw his face. But he always seems worried. Like when you draw it, all there will be are the black-bled nightmares you hide from him. You don’t know what kind of face a machine would have, but you allow Clear his privacy.)

Your favorite moments are when he steals you away in the night. Visiting hours are over and you’re supposed to be sleeping. No one regularly checks on you since you’re out of critical status now, which means when Clear comes in through the window and gathers you up, no one is the wiser when you both slip back out.

It was Clear’s idea at first. He thought perhaps the hospital room was starting to stifle you, and you have to admit that he’s not wrong. You forget the color of the city when you’re always inside a monochrome room. You forget what vibrancy is, what the stars and moon Clear wants to show you are. There’s not many of the far away pinpricks of light given how lit up the island already is, but when Clear takes you on top of the roofs, higher than you’ve ever been in your life, they become more visible.

He holds you the whole time, on his back and supporting the backs of your thighs as your arms wind around him. You’re a lot better with this than you first were, cursing up a storm and gripping Clear for dear life. You do panic a little whenever he jumps from one roof to the next, and there’s that startling feeling of floating, but he never drops you, never so much as stumbles.

This, you suppose, is the strength of someone made artificially. It almost strikes you as odd, how much power Clear has. You can feel the flex of what you suppose is muscle as he arranges you neatly on his back when he carries you, the force of his fingers gripping your thighs, the mighty spring of his leaps, lifting you both higher than any human could possibly do. Clear squeezes your hand hard, he holds you like a child without a problem, and you’re confused by just how comforting it all is. Clear is comforting. He’s calm and _gentle_. He’s so gentle. He doesn’t have to be. He could destroy so much more than you possibly could with that fantastic strength he has.

But he only uses it to lift you up, to show you the starry displays of the island and of the sky, to cradle you, make you feel delicate and precious but safe, and nothing in the world has made you feel like this before. You wonder if you could crush him into his bare metal bits - not from any desire to, but out of simple curiosity from comparison of strengths. Or maybe you’d be able to hold Clear close to you and not break him.

You’re laying on a roof with him one such adventurous and beautiful night. You’re in nothing but your hospital gown, but Clear has taken off his jacket and draped the large folds over your shoulders. You didn’t think androids would have a smell, but there’s something sweet and briny wrapping itself around you as you tug the jacket closer.

You tell Clear why you think you did it. You try to map things out as best as you can, and sometimes as you stare at the never-ending spin of celestial diamonds above, you feel like you’re talking to yourself. Clear doesn’t respond, only listens. He doesn’t pour any kind of words into your ears. You tell him about the anger and sand and glass and bleeding ink and your skin and how you’re afraid that you’ll never be able to recover from this and that you’re incapable of holding things close to you because your strength has only made you weak. It made you a destroyer. You let loose all your insecurities until your voice wobbles and the sky becomes a smear of silver and dark blue.

Clear listens. He wraps you in his arms when you’re done. You think about him breaking just from touching you, but his hold his firm. He’s solid. He’s a brick wall but his hair and voice are so soft when he soothes you.

“Mizuki-san,” he tells you as he rocks you back and forth, “Aoba-san has told me a little about you, you know. And so I know that even though you’ve got scary strength, it hasn’t always hurt people. Mizuki-san attracted people to him not because of how he could protect people with his fists. Mizuki-san attracted his friends because he cares about people, and makes everyone feel loved. So, I think you’re not only strong physically. After all, even after Aoba-san used his powers on you, you’re still here. Mizuki-san’s will is so strong. As someone who was created with intentions only to take orders, I admire that greatly. Truly, Mizuki-san is wonderful.”

For some odd reason, that information sounds new to you, that you cared about people. Of course you do. You love Aoba and Koujaku and your team and your foster parents (even though you feel like you never showed it) and you love Clear. You know how shitty it is to be left behind and forgotten and to be like some disgrace for even existing. Sometimes the only thing you can do, even when everything’s being taken, is tell someone else the words you’ve never heard, or to make someone feel accepted like you never where. The harmony from it was what kept you stable.

But because you clung too hard, maybe things weren’t always in harmony. You know what that’s like now, sitting here on a roof with Clear hugging you and humming softly. Piece by piece, all the glass you crushed that sunk into your skin gets pulled out.

It hurts like a bitch, and you’re bleeding. At this moment though, being patient seems possible. Clear thinks you got the strength for it. So maybe, just for right now, you’ll lower your fists and let your mind finally try to stitch itself again. Because there are things you want to say to Clear too one day, about his mask, his artificiality, his singing - you want to recognize all of it, and show him just as he’s showing you that he’s already doing okay. 

One day, you hope you’ll be able to be just as gentle with your strength as Clear is.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually really really like the thought of Clear carrying Mizuki around and showing him the city lights and stars and stuff and both of them just being really dumb and romantic but also really trying to understand each other's pain that they try to hide. 
> 
> Tumblr, clears-jellyfish-dress  
> Twitter, @fuwajellyfish


End file.
